A newly-invented Russophobic trope that has circulated throughout the fake news over the past week is the notion that Russia hacked all 50 states during the 2016 election cycle based off of the findings in a Senate Intelligence report, implying that their interference was the reason Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton.

News entities such as the New York Times, Esquire, PBS NewsHour, CNet, Daily Beast, Yahoo News, and many others have ran misleading headlines to gin up the Russian threat. Some have claimed that Russians “hacked” all 50 states, others say they “targeted” all 50 states, but the narrative is clear: Be very, very afraid of the evil Rooskies, and their threatening behavior against our democracy.

Left-wing journalist Michael Tracey, who is one of the few liberals with the courage to speak truth to power regarding the Russian collusion hoax, cited the report itself to expose the dirty tricks of the smear merchants in a series of tweets.

Senate Intel report found “no evidence that vote tallies were altered or that voter registry files were deleted or modified” yet the big headline was that Russia “hacked all 50 states” — weird pic.twitter.com/vypfXHDSPy

Trending: North Carolina High School Teacher: VP Mike Pence Should be “Shot in the Head”

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 28, 2019

Some headlines used the phrasing that Russia “targeted” all 50 states. Of course “targeting” is an amorphous weasel word. Some of this “targeting” included simple, routine “scanning” of public-facing websites, which states only noticed after the Feds issued a panicked warning pic.twitter.com/srCpCZSI8U

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— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 28, 2019

NYT and others blared the headline, “All 50 states were targeted by Russia in 2016,” but this state says “they have seen no evidence of scanning or attack attempts related to state-wide election infrastructure in 2016.” Did anyone even bother to read the report? pic.twitter.com/ViATryNoWd

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 28, 2019

The “targeting” that we’re all supposed to be up-in-arms about consisted of “pinging” public websites, which happens constantly all day everyday. That’s why local officials barely took note of it. Only after the “Russian interference” narrative was introduced did anyone care pic.twitter.com/YzB1cAGuop

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 28, 2019

Of course huge sections of the report are redacted so we may never know what this mysterious “unexplained event” was ???? pic.twitter.com/sdrM0juk8c

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 29, 2019

In one instance, a malware “attack” initially assumed to be the Russian government was later assessed to be non-Russian criminal activity. This stuff, like so much else with the broader Russia narrative, is confirmation bias run amok pic.twitter.com/4GDubFXgLT

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) July 29, 2019

Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Christopher Krebs dismissed the alleged threat while appearing on Capitol Hill in 2017.

DHS cyber chief Christopher Krebs on Russian “attacks” in 2017: “Scanning happens all the time it’s happening right now to a number of probably — your websites. Scanning is a regular activity across the web. I would not characterize that as an attack” https://t.co/7WqAifAk4J

— Paul Surovell (@paulsurovell) July 28, 2019

Once again, the fake news is relying on the ignorance of the public to create false perceptions about the threat Russia poses to our democratic elections. Meanwhile, Google executives are being caught bragging about how they plan to manipulate their algorithms to prevent the re-election of Trump in 2020.

If there is a real threat to electoral integrity in the United States, it is coming from Big Tech not Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin.

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